Before you learn to run, you first need to learn how to walk. For the Toronto Blue Jays, after finishing last in the AL East with only 74 wins in 2024, they first needed to understand what it meant to win again before embarking on one of the most successful seasons in franchise history.
You can see how the comparison writes itself.
On top of needing their best players to perform like their best players, the complementary contributions also badly needed to take a step forward — and that’s precisely what the likes of Addison Barger, Ernie Clement, Nathan Lukes and Davis Schneider brought to the table in 2025, all of whom advanced through Toronto’s system in recent years.
What was the special ingredient that helped everything come together this year? Many factors, honestly. But among the most impactful was returning to the basics. You can have all the flashy underlying metrics that most scouts dream of. Talent sometimes isn’t enough, though. You also need to learn what it means to be a winner.
“They’re teaching how to win,” Barger said when asked about the Blue Jays’ player development success stories during Wednesday’s appearance on MLB Network. “It’s about being a competitor and being a gamer — playing the game the right way.
“Bat speed is cool. Throwing the ball hard is cool. All that stuff is great, but you need to learn how to win. I think they do a good job in teaching that through the minor-league system.”
Barger, who opened this past season at triple-A Buffalo after debuting with the Blue Jays in ’24, certainly knows all about hitting balls hard. He ought to, after ranking in the 90th percentile or better in both hard-hit rate (51 per cent) and average bat speed (75.9 m.p.h.) across the majors during his first full major league campaign.
But he also learned what winning means at this level while
emerging as a key member of the Blue Jays’ offence — placing third in home runs (21) — which helped lead this club to its 94-win season, first AL East title in nearly a decade and first World Series appearance in 32 years.
Unfortunately, though, the 25-year-old also experienced the heartbreak of losing Game 7 of the World Series — as did every one of his teammates.
As much as an organization can teach you how to win, nobody can tell you how to deal with a loss, especially one of this magnitude. There isn’t a playbook out there that can help with that pain.
“It was really sad,” Barger said of the Blue Jays’ clubhouse following their World Series Game 7 loss. “I think everybody was really upset. I don’t think anybody wasn’t crying in there.”
Still, even in defeat, this season is proof that the Blue Jays’ system is working. The next step now becomes finding ways to replicate that success so the pipeline continues to churn out valuable success stories to help fuel future post-season aspirations.
